Associate Professor
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Associate Professor of Engineering in Medicine
Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology

Brian J. Kirby currently directs the
Micro/Nanofluidics Laboratory in the Sibley School of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. He joined the School in August 2004.
Previous to that, he
was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff in the
Microfluidics Department
at Sandia National Laboratories in
Livermore, California, where he worked from 2001-2004 on microfluidic systems, with
applications primarily to counterbioterrorism. From 1996-2001 he worked as a graduate
student in the High Temperature
Gasdynamics Laboratory at Stanford University, where he
developed laser spectroscopy techniques for imaging gases in flames for combustion and
aerothermopropulsion applications. From 1994-1996 he worked as a graduate student in
the Variable Gravity Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan, studying
multiphase heat transfer processes; at
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA,
studying fluid mechanics processes in hard drive stacks; and in the
Gas Dynamics Research
Laboratories in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Michigan,
studying soot formation processes in low-pressure diffusion flames.

Professor Kirby has received a 2002 R&D Top 100 Invention award for work on microvalves
for high pressure-fluid control, a 2004 JD Watson Investigator award for
microdevices for protein production and analysis, and a 2006 Presidential Early
Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) award for nanoscale electrokinetics
and bioagent detection. He has received the 2008 Mr. and Mrs. Robert F. Tucker Excellence
in Teaching Award, and he has also been selected to participate at the 2008 National Academy of
Engineering Frontiers of Engineering conference.